Nothing like getting kissed and socked at the same time. Chester replied evenly, “Children change people. I think Julia would be responsible.”
“Tainted blood. Listen to me. What have I been telling you?”
“What about Hansford’s side?” He tacked to the wind.
“Nothing good can ever come of Hansford or his blood.” She snapped her mouth shut like a turtle.
Chester realized that members of a generation knew one another in ways the younger generation couldn’t fathom until they, too, were older. He’d never thought to ask his mother or his father about Hansford because no one had even known Hansford was alive. Once he showed up, the questions slowly bubbled in Chester and other people, too.
“Mother, what do you think happened to him all those years he was away?”
She stared out the window. “He got what he deserved, that’s what happened to him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Maybe you knew him better than I thought.” Chester gave her a rare dig.
“What’s that supposed to mean? I did not teach my sons to be rude.”
“I’m not being rude,” he calmly said. “Just curious.”
“Curiosity killed the cat.” She paused. “Is yours still attending services at Christ Lutheran?”
“No. She prays at home now.”
Mother Smith turned her head to stare at her son. He had such a good sense of humor, and since she had none there were times when he was a mystery to her, not that she’d admit it. Part of her armor was in announcing to her sons and husband, as well as anyone else unfortunate enough to get caught in her crossfire, that she knew her sons inside and out.
They reached the house. The blue spruce out front, covered in snow, could have graced a postcard.
He walked her up to the front door. “Mother, if Julia and I can’t have children—”
“Don’t say that. It’s her, not you.”
“It doesn’t matter. It takes two to tango.”
“I do wish you wouldn’t use slang in front of me.”
“If it turns out”—he patiently stuck to his subject—“that we can’t have children, we’re thinking of adopting. Would you accept an adopted child as your grandchild?”
“Never.”
43
Do you think Louise will ever remove her Civil Air Patrol white helmet? Perhaps it’s grafted to her head.” Celeste inhaled a Montecristo No. 3 cigar, a habit she hid from everyone but Cora and Ramelle.
Cora laughed and continued scrubbing the intricate pattern of Celeste’s silverware with a toothbrush dipped in tarnish remover. “The good thing about the war is it gives my girl something to think about besides Mary.”
“I don’t suppose she has much choice but to ease up on her—” Celeste took a drag, then added, “I take that back. She could raise recriminations to new heights.”
“She doesn’t shut up, if that’s what you mean.”
“In a sense.” Celeste picked up a heavy fork and rubbed it with a green cloth.
“That’s my job.”
“Idle hands do the Devil’s work.” Celeste smiled and picked up another fork. “How’s Hansford today?”
“He’s down with O.B. at the stable. He says they’re going to refurbish the tack room, except that word ‘refurbish’ worries me.”
“Me, too. I think it means dollars.”
“No.” Cora shook her head. “He’d hike on up here to tell you if’n money was needed.”
“Do you like having him home again?”
Cora shrugged. “There’s things about him I remember as the same, but other ways he’s some old man I don’t much know.”
“I don’t suppose anyone is so strange to us as ourselves when we were young. He must remind you of yourself when you were young.”
“I don’t know as I considered that.”
“Haven’t you ever thought about who you were when you were young?”
“No.”
“Cora”—Celeste exhaled a perfect blue ring of smoke, which lazed upward—“you amaze me.”
“Why think about myself—then or now? I am what I am.”
“You don’t think time changes people?”
“Yes—what good does it do to worry it?”
“I’m not worrying—just turning it over in my mind the way we used to turn over arrowheads when we’d find them as children. Every little chip was a source of fascination and delight.”
“My mind doesn’t work that way.” Cora smiled, hands on hips. “Sometimes my mind doesn’t work at all. Like I say, sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits.”
“And sometimes I think too much.” Celeste whistled a snatch of a tune, then asked, “Well—are you thinking about anything?”
“Mary. The war. Seems like our country gets into these messes every twenty years or so. We raise up a new generation of men and they get killed off.”
“Yes, I think about that, too.”
Cora dipped the silverware in a bowl of warm water after scrubbing it. “Juts worries me.”
“Julia?” Celeste’s voice rose in surprise.
“She finally got Chessy to see Doc Horning. She’s been there twice in the last few years. She’s hunky-dory. What if Chester’s not right?”
“Ah—that does present a problem.”
“Juts is determined to have a baby.”
“Perhaps she could accomplish this without the assistance of her husband.” Celeste smiled wryly.
“That would be a fine kettle of fish, wouldn’t it?”
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat, to use the old phrase.”
Cora shook her head. “I don’t think my girl would do that. Every year this wanting a baby notion gets stronger.”
“I love Juts, but she is spectacularly unsuited for motherhood, that altar upon which the ego is daily sacrificed.”
“You lost me with the altar but I’d say she has a lot to learn.”
Celeste laughed. “Juts is the quintessential little sister: rebellious, self-centered, and somewhat adorable.”
Cora smiled. “Those two girls like to drive me to drink when they were little. I thought, ‘Oh, they’ll grow up one day and all this tussling and hustling will stop. They’ll be best friends.’” She lifted up a dripping spoon. “They’re still tussling and hustling.”
“It is amazing, isn’t it? Out of each other’s sight they behave as relatively normal people. Put them together and they’re six and ten all over again. That episode last year in Cadwalder’s was the limit.”
“Over Juts not being a mother. See, that’s what worries me.”
“I thought it was over Julia reminding Louise she was forty.” She tapped her finger next to her nose for a second. “Oh, Lord, her forty-first is around the corner, isn’t it? And she’ll be a grandmother soon. And Juts will be—”
“Thirty-seven on March 6. If only Louise’s birthday was in front of Juts’s, she could lie better.” Cora shook her head ruefully.
“You know what will happen, Cora? Someday Mary will be forty and Maizie will be thirty-nine and Louise will tell everyone she’s forty-five.”
This set them off into peals of laughter, these old friends who had lost count of the years between them. Although born on opposite sides of the tracks, they’d known each other all their lives. In time, the material differences eroded in significance. Only character remained.
“What do you think about adopting a baby?” Cora asked.
“Me?” Celeste was startled.
“Julia.”
“So—this is serious.”
“Appears so.”
“I hope the baby has a sense of humor—it’s going to need it.”
“I’ll be there to help.”
“Julia wants to be the center of attention. For all of Louise’s religious mania, which recurs like malaria, she is the more responsible of the two. Juts isn’t happy if she hasn’t upset the applecart, but usually it winds
up being her own applecart.”
“I know.” Cora smiled, thinking of her younger daughter. “She was a kicker even when I carried her.”
“What about Chester?”
“Any man that can put up with Josephine for a mother has hidden strengths. He’ll be a good father.”
“You know, Cora, I never thought of that. He probably is stronger than we give him credit for. He’s usually so quiet.”
“Well, how can he get a word in edgewise? But he’ll come around, just wait and see.”
“Then he’ll have two children—Julia and the baby.”
“She’ll muster up.”
“Juts—no, she won’t.” Celeste shook her head.
“Wanna bet?”
Celeste’s eyes brightened, her shoulders straightened; nothing like a wager to get her blood up. “You want to bet me that Julia Ellen Hunsenmeir will mature enough to make a good mother? How many years do I have for this bet?”
“One. One from the time the baby arrives.”
Celeste slyly smiled. “What are we betting?”
“Your John Deere tractor, the old one. Attachments, too.”
“Cora!” Celeste laughed. “You’ve been thinking about this for a long time.” Cora nodded yes and Celeste tacked on, “Of course, this may come to naught. There may not be any baby.”
“She’ll get a baby even if she has to steal one. Just you wait.”
“Well, how much time, really, are we discussing here?”
“You think Louise hit the hernia note when she hit forty? Wait for Julia Ellen. Oh, Lordy.” Cora pointed her finger, something she rarely did. “She’ll have that baby before she’s forty, and I mean it—if she can’t have one or adopt one, she’ll lift one.”
Celeste crossed her arms over her chest, bit her lip, and thought. “The John Deere. Well, what do I get if I win?”
“Two months—my work—free.”
Celeste reached across the nook table to shake hands. “Deal!” She couldn’t wait to write Ramelle about this!
44
Pearlie filled in for Lillian Yost, who had picked up a bad chest cold. He crouched next to the small kerosene heater while Chester scanned the deep skies with his binoculars. A laminated chart of enemy aircraft as seen from the ground rested against one wall of the tower.
Huge, inky cumulus clouds were rolling in from the west.
“Another one coming.” Pearlie lit a cigarette and offered Chessy one.
“Ever try anything other than Luckies?” Chessy asked. He was a Pall Mall man, himself.
“If I did, I wouldn’t tell you.” He tapped the pack so an extra cigarette slid farther out than the first.
Chester hunkered down next to Pearlie to light his cigarette off of Pearlie’s. He dragged deep. “Funny how you get used to a brand. Julia and her Chesterfields … She started smoking them when she was twelve. You can’t get her to try anything else and if I forget to bring home a pack after work, I’m in trouble. She’s started playing poker with Fannie Jump Creighton for cigarettes. Says she’ll win lots and save money.”
“Won’t be long before Fannie’s got her playing for dimes and then dollars.”
“She says it makes the time pass.”
“Makes the money pass, too,” Pearlie snorted.
“I wasn’t taking bets on that shop. I figured you and I would be working for the Rifes sooner or later.”
“Me, too.” Pearlie stared up at the winter sky, half of it clear, with stars like big chunks of ice, and the other half looking like a black cauldron. “Imagine flying into something like that.”
“I’d like to give it a shot,” Chessy said.
“I saw one war. I don’t need to see another.”
Pearlie had lied about his age, enlisting in the Army at fifteen, shipped to France within weeks. His memories of the country were of mud, shelled towns, and bloated corpses. “I learned to love American cigarettes. Those French things are like sucking on corn silk, and if you really want to puke, try the Turkish weeds.”
“Too young for the first and too old for this one—hell.” Chessy spit out a fleck of tobacco. “I don’t think I’m too damned old. I’m stronger than I was when I was twenty.”
“Smarter, too. You tell a twenty-year-old to go over the top, machine-gun fire flying every which way, and he’ll go. At your age you think twice about it.”
“Doesn’t mean I won’t go up and over,” Chessy said.
“You know, politicians are claiming victory before we’re even over there. I fought the Germans. They’re tough and they’re smart. You might get your chance yet, Chessy.”
“Think it’s going to be that bad for us?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Don’t you think Germany’s got to wear down?”
“If they conquer enough territory they can replenish their supplies. They can win the whole shooting match. The secret is gas. No kidding. If they can protect their fuel supply, they’ve got a chance to take home all the marbles.”
“What about the Japs?”
“Not a prayer. The Pacific war isn’t our first priority and we’ll still skunk them.”
“You’re a lot smarter than I am. I don’t pay much attention to the world out there. I know I should, but—” He paused. “I’ve got enough right here to keep my mind busy.” He ground out the stub. “I have been reading my maps, though. If the Germans have any kind of aircraft carriers they can hit us wherever they want. Or they can take Newfoundland—”
His brother-in-law interrupted. “Not a good idea. They couldn’t hold it, not even long enough to build air bases.”
“Then Cuba.”
“Yeah, that would work if they want to commit a big enough force to do it. But yeah, that would work.”
“They say Argentina’s for Germany even though she’s playing neutral. That’s a rich country.”
“Rich and far away.” Pearlie held his feet toward the heater. “Funny what happens to your mind when you read maps and start thinking like a general. You begin to think those countries in their different colors are like Fannie’s poker chips. You’re going to pick them up and put them in your pocket. And all the thousands—millions, even—of people clinging to that poker chip, you start thinking they’re ants.”
The first snowflake lazed down, a warning of what was to follow. The men pulled the tarp over the top of the tower. It was rolled up like a window blind, but horizontally instead of vertically. So many Civil Air Patrol volunteers had been coming down with colds because they were drenched in rain or covered in snow that Chessy had rigged up the tarp. This way, if airplanes did brave bad weather, the second you heard them you could roll back the tarp and turn on the searchlight. The second man could crank the siren. They sat down next to the kerosene heater again. Snow fell more thickly now. As the wind picked up, the tower swayed slightly.
“Shit, Chessy.”
“She’ll hold.”
“First you try to freeze me to death, now I’ll go down buried in a mess of timber, a big searchlight for my headstone.”
“Nah, we can roll the light off so it crashes into St. Rose’s.”
Pearlie laughed. He paused a long time before he said, “You’ve been lucky, buddy.”
“Huh?” Chester’s blond stubble was growing out.
“Tuesday nights with your mother.” He paused. “And the occasional swing by the firehouse to make it look good.”
The glow illuminated Chester’s surprised face. “I do see my mother on Tuesdays.”
“That’s not the only person you’re seeing.”
Chester clamped his jaw. When he finally spoke, his voice was so low you could almost hear the snowflakes piling up on the tarp. “No. I’ve been taking dancing lessons. I want to surprise Juts.”
“You will.”
“Come on, Pearlie.”
“I’m not an idiot. I’m not a judge, either. Things happen. I’m just telling you, you’ve been lucky. Your wife and your mother can’t stand the sight of ea
ch other, so they won’t compare notes, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be a slip-up along the line.”
“I said I was taking dancing lessons.”
“Jesus, Chester.” Pearlie glared at him.
A low sigh, a moan, escaped Chester, who now felt the cold acutely. “I don’t know how I got into this.”
“I do. We’re both married to women who would rather give orders than take them.” Paul grimaced, then relaxed into a smile. “I could kill Louise. If I had a nickel for every time I wanted to wring her neck, I’d be richer than all the Rifes put together, but—” He shrugged. “I’ve got two great kids. I’d die for those girls. I never knew I could—” He stopped because he couldn’t describe his love for his children. “And I love Louise even when I hate her. Crazy.”
“I never thought it would be like this—life.”
“My problem is, I never thought.” Paul looked his best friend in the eye. “I’m thinking now. I’m thinking for my family. I’m thinking I can’t protect my daughters if they marry the wrong men. I can’t even protect my wife if we do get bombed. And I’m thinking for you, man. You think we’re in the middle of a storm now—shit.”
“What am I going to do?”
“Do you love her?”
Chester put his head in his hands. “Yes.”
“Damn.”
“It just happened. She thinks I’m the best thing since sliced bread. I can’t hurt her, Paul, I can’t.”
“Everyone gets hurt, not just her. If you give her up now, it won’t be as bad as if you wait—unless you want to divorce Juts.”
He forced a smile. “She’d kill me.”
“Do you still love her?”
“Yeah—but it’s different.”
“That wild first stuff, it’s like some kind of dope. I couldn’t keep my hands off Wheezie when we started out. It changes. But I love her. We’ve walked a lot of miles together. I can’t imagine living without her.” He put his gloved hand on Chester’s shoulder. “You’ve got to take charge. Like I said, I’m no judge. If you had a squeeze in Baltimore or York, maybe you could get away with it, but Runnymede?” He shook his head.
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